Since there’s no one-size-fits-all science on raising children, a lot of guesswork gets employed. And if you take anything without definitive and consistent truths and add a crap ton of worry, doubt and failure, you can wind up with a heightened appetite for superstition and mystical wisdom.

A person can get so uneasy about their parenting skills, sometimes it may seem like the stars probably do know better. On a really bad day, the idea of randomly selecting vague, weirdly-illustrated cards might seem an improvement over our hectic, sleep-starved decision making process. One might stare at the sludge of tea leaves in an empty cup and be struck with a sudden longing for their mystical tips and tricks (or just another even stronger cup). Whatever.

It’d be wonderful if palm reading could magically give us the elusive answers to parenting (and not just that we’ve got a glob of yogurt on our hand). Though, our interest in the telling of our past and future, as parents, would be better described as a desire to know what the eff we’d done wrong and what we should be doing from now on.

But as my wise mother always said, smiling reassuringly, “It’ll all come out in the wash.” Uh, hmmmm. Even though that always helped to hear, now that I think about it… that sounds more like a detergent commercial than a philosophical saying.